Skip to main content

An Update And Magnum Review!

Hello people's. Well there's nothing like a mishap to make the website hits go through the roof. Anyhow thank you all so much for your messages. I'll pick up the story from Tuesday night.

Once it was out I drive her down to the recovery garage for a check over. I sorted my stuff out and chucked some stuff into the Magnum which was to be my bed for the night. My truck was then driven back to the yard under her own steam. Drives perfectly, even all the lights work. No air leaks nothing..

So, the Magnum. I woke up to a covering of snow. Not a great start in a truck I've never driven before! I then went round to tip the load, all fine and delivered with no problems. On the way back I was looking at every ditch and how deep it was, and on a couple of occasions when the road dragged the truck towards the ditch my heart was in my mouth. I was somewhat surprised at how nice the Magnum was to drive. A very pleasant truck, the automatic gearbox and 480 engine made light work of the load I took back to yard. The gearbox was better than the Scania, but then it is an iShift. Also the bed was one of the most comfortable I've ever slept in.

Now to the bad points. Build quality is not good, the fog lights (which have now been changed) were full of water. The dash doesn't look like it'll age well. I probably couldn't live in a Magnum, the storage is shocking, not helped by the daft hammock instead of the top bunk. So all in all a good truck but I wouldn't give up a Scania for it.

When I got back to yard I washed down my poor lorry and to be honest the damage, or lack of, is startling. Looks like I clipped a hedge rather than drove it into ditch on the limiter (which is only 84kmh by the way). The company knew more about what happened than I did. They could tell exactly how hard I braked, how long for, everything. I don't even remember braking.

On Trucknet there is a topic called Scanias the good and the bad or something. This proves why Scanias are so good. It's increased my faith in Scanias no end, I really hope I'm not but if I'm ever in a bad accident again there is only one truck I want to be in. 40 tonnes flat out into a ditch and it looks like this. I doubt the Magnum would fare so well. The Chereau fridge is back on the road already.

Anyhow I'm in a tidy red Highline waiting for the boat in Rosslare. Will be back in a few days when my lovely lorry is ready to roll again.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A SHORT DAF XF REVIEW

DAF Review So, one of most common questions I'm asked lately is what I think of the DAF. Obviously for a long time time I've mostly driven Volvos and Scanias and before this job it was well over a decade since I last tramped full time in a DAF (for HSF). As you know though I had driven later models and hated the body XF with a passion!  When the current version came out DAF seemed very confidant it would change my mind about them in our Twitter exchanges but I thought how different can it be? The answer? A lot. In some ways its like a completely different truck despite being almost identical in looks. Firstly- the gearbox. The auto on previous DAFs was a fupping disaster and everyone knew it! Show, jerky and just generally rubbish in a way no auto should be this late in the day. That's completely changed, for the vast majority of the time it's indistinguishable from an iShift (that having long been the good standard). Yes it has its odd moments but they are very rare an...

Disaster!

Good Saturday to you. Something of a disaster has befallen the Trundlewagon videos. They've gone! So what was supposed to be a three part will now just have to suddenly end at part 2. Not entirely sure what happened there. So many apologies if you were waiting for the third part, you'll have to make do with my cycling rant! I promise I shall get filming soon. Will get started on the 'Lukes Top Tips' one soon! So as an apology here are a few more old pictures. An Oriel Jones F12. Beautiful truck. This was my Dads first local job after we moved to Wales. He was a mechanic/driver. He's actually back there now, just as a driver. But the abattoir is now owned by Dunbia and the transport is done by a chap called Brian Thomas who was a driver back then. Another pic is the Harris Plant Hire 2800 I think. My Dad was a mechanic here and it was them that gave me my first ever driving job driving a Moxy. The bloke that drove this lorry was in his 80's I think. He could bare...

Words Of Wisdom From My Comedy Idol Billy Connolly

Was tweeting about this last night and thought it would make a good post as it explains how I go about making my videos and podcasts- Oh Billy Connolly ❤️ An idol of mine. This is exactly how I do what I do. Not for a second claiming to be even 1% as clever or funny as Billy but all my videos & my podcasts are like this. Press record & see what happens. Nothing is ever planned. And like he said it is wildly exciting! I’m of average intelligence. Not particularly clever but one thing I do have is a relentlessly fast brain that NEVER stops thinking, at a million miles an hour. From the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep I’m thinking a million things at once. Possibly ADHD related. Can cause it’s own problems. It can be as exhausting as it sounds and I literally have no idea how to switch off. But I think the good outweighs the bad. So yeah I just turn the camera on, the voice recorder, or fire up the laptop to write an article and it all just flows, normally first take/...